Most
Americans would probably define "human security" as a summation of
the founding principles set forth in the Declaration of
Independence:

We hold
these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted
among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed.

The
Founding Fathers understood that there will be no life, liberty, or
pursuit of one's dreams without security. It is security that
enables us to enjoy every other right enumerated and implied in our
founding documents and the charters of organizations like the
United Nations that we helped create. These docu­ments
recognize that the first responsibility of the nation-state is to
provide that security. Hence, Article 1 of the U.N. Charter lists
as its first purpose "To maintain international peace and
security." This is fol­lowed by purposes that enumerate
"respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination
of peoples" and "promoting and encouraging respect for human rights
and for fundamental freedoms for all."1

Regrettably,
many non-Americans have come to view "human security" quite
differently. Over the years, various groups have stretched the
definition of "security" to mean supranational entities intervening
ostensibly to protect individuals anywhere and the definition of
"rights" to include everything from a right to life to a right to
development and resources.[1]The
well-developed entry on Wikipe­dia, the popular online "free
encyclopedia," dem­onstrates how far this concept has come.[2]

Today,
the United Nations is pursuing a broad "human security" agenda that
proponents claim is merely complementing national security. In
reality, they aim to shift the focus of U.N. and other
inter­national activities away from state relations to
pro­tecting groups of people based on a plethora of needs and
wants. As U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan puts it:

We must
also broaden our view of what is meant by peace and security. Peace
means much more than the absence of war. Human security can no
longer be understood in purely military terms. Rather, it must
en­compass economic development, social justice, environmental
protection, demo­cratization, disarmament, and respect for
human rights and the rule of law.[3]

As
Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at
Princeton University, explains, the "principal conclusion" of the
Secretary-Gen­eral's High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges,
and Change is that:

[I]nternational
security comprises both state security and human security. Human
secu­rity, in turn, is a function above all of the quality and
capacity of domestic govern­ments across the globe.
International-secu­rity problems are irretrievably intertwined
with domestic political, economic, and social problems.[4]

The
impetus for these statements was the fail­ure of the U.N.
Security Council to keep the United States from enforcing the U.N.
resolutions on Iraq, which drew great attention to U.N.
fail­ures in the Middle East, Rwanda, Sudan, and the Balkans.
Proponents of human security no longer believe that nation-states
are capable of securing "freedom from want" and "freedom from fear"
for individual peoples. They advocate an interna­tional system
that makes paramount the determi­nation of the "general will"
and "common good" by bureaucrats and elites.

This is a
dramatic and fundamental distortion of the right to be secure. The
effort to "broaden our view of what is meant by peace and security"
obscures and runs counter to the long-standing right of
nation-states to secure their own territories and populations from
external threats-a principle upon which international legal
traditions and treaty organizations such as the U.N. are based.[5]
The human security agenda has the potential to undermine not only
the nation-state model on which the U.N. was founded, but also the
principles of sovereignty, accountability, and national security
that the United States holds as fundamental.

Most
Americans are already skeptical about the ability of the U.N. to
advance global security and peace.[6]
Commonly cited reasons are the U.N.'s inability to secure peace in
the Middle East, to keep Iran and North Korea from developing
nuclear weapons, and to prevent internal fraud and abuse such as
the Oil-for-Food scandal and sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers.
Their confidence has been deeply shaken by a number of highly
critical reports that confirm the U.N.'s record of
ineffective­ness and a politicized U.N. agenda that promotes
failed social and economic policies.

Therefore,
it is understandable that Americans question the U.N.'s seemingly
constant pursuit of binding documents on themes that purportedly
would advance security or development but in actuality would
restrain U.S. power and leadership and undermine America's
democratic and free-market practices.

The human
security agenda is one such effort that may well prove inimical to
U.S. interests, and some observers believe that the goal could be a
dec­laration on human security in 2006 and a conven­tion in
2007. One indication of this is that the U.N. has made "human
security" the theme of a three-day conference for nongovernmental
organizations preceding the opening of the U.N. General
Assem­bly in September 2006. The U.N. Department of Public
Information expects over 2,500 civil society "partners" to attend
its three-day conference on "Unfinished Business: Effective
Partnerships for Human Security and Sustainable Development."[7]

It is
incumbent upon Congress, the Administra­tion, and federal
courts to be vigilant. They should resist language in international
declarations, reso­lutions, and agreements that embraces this
faulty understanding of security. Rather, they should clar­ify
what is meant by any references to security and insist on using the
term "national security" wher­ever sovereignty is at stake. In
legislative enact­ments, agency regulations, and case
decisions, they should rely exclusively on human rights
instru­ments that have been officially adopted and ratified by
the United States.

Defining
Human Security

According
to its proponents, human security involves protecting "the dignity
and worth of the human person."[8]
To the extent that poverty, fam­ine, conflict, pandemics, and
lack of access to resources pose an affront to individuals' dignity
and worth, they believe these problems must be addressed in
supranational ways, since nation-states, in their view, are
failing to do so.

The
definition of human security in the 2003 report of the U.N.
Commission on Human Security shows the breadth of this
agenda:

Human
security means protecting vital freedoms. It means protecting
people from critical and pervasive threats and situations, building
on their strengths and aspirations. It also means creating systems
that give people the building blocks of survival, dignity and
livelihood. To do this, it offers two general strategies:
protection and empowerment. Protection shields people from dangers.
Empowerment enables people to develop their potential and become
full participants in decision-making.[9]

The U.N.
Office for the Coordination of Human­itarian Affairs (OCHA)
uses an expanded definition:

[Human
security means] the protection of "the vital core of all human
lives in ways that enhance human freedoms and
fulfill­ment."… It means creating political, social,
en­vironmental, economic, military and cultural systems
that, when combined, give people the building blocks for survival,
livelihood and dignity.

Human
security is far more than the absence of violent conflict. It
encompasses human rights, good governance and access to economic
opportunity, education and health care. It is a concept that
comprehensively addresses both "freedom from fear" and "freedom
from want."[10]

Under
this expansive definition, human security covers needs that are
traditionally the responsibil­ity of families, civil society,
and local, state, and national governments. Specifically, as one
1994 U.N. document explains, the definition of human security
includes:

Economic
security, such as ensuring individuals a minimum
income;

Food
security, such as guaranteeing access to food;

Health
security, such as guaranteeing protec­tion from disease and
unhealthy lifestyles;

Environmental
security, such as protecting peo­ple from short-term and
long-term natural and man-made disasters;

Personal
security, such as protecting people from any form and perpetration
of violence;

Community
security, such as protecting people from the loss of traditions and
values and from secular and ethnic violence; and

Political
security, such as ensuring individuals' basic human rights.[11]

The
purpose of such a broad-brush agenda is not the protection of human
rights, but rather the promotion of social entitlements through an
inter­nationally protected welfare system.[12]
The Com­mission on Human Security even acknowledged the
immensity of the task: "To attain the goals of human security, the
Commission proposes a framework based on the protection and
empower­ment of people"-a bottom-up approach that empowers
individuals and communities to "act on their own behalf" in
addition to the traditional top-down approach by which states have
the pri­mary role of protection from "critical and
perva­sive threats."[13]

Examples
of this broad agenda abound on U.N. Web sites. The United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
describes its human security focus this way:

This
rebuilding of security, which is now human rather than inter-State,
imposes new directions for reflection and action. It
presup­poses first of all a sociological conception of
security, which must be perceived in its social and cultural
environment. It also implies an act of political
engineering, the peacemaker be­ing vested with the role of
rebuilder of bat­tered political communities but also with that
of designing new political communities dis­pensing with those
features of the nation-State which make for war: working for peace
means promoting regional integration, open­ing up political
communities to globalization and human flows, and establishing new
forms of democratic deliberation that go be­yond the national
setting. It must be responsi­ble before being sovereign,
with everybody accountable for the failings in the social
con­tract of the other and thus being led to act in a
subsidiary way with the other. Lastly, it is bound to be
interactive since States operate in interaction with an
international public space made up of non-State actors increasingly
in­volved in international life, monitoring and watching over
the use of power by States, and helping to define the conditions of
war and of peace (nongovernmental organizations, me­dia,
transnational networks, etc.).[14]

The
United Nations Development Program (UNDP) describes human security
as "an effort to re-conceptualize security in a fundamental
man­ner. It is primarily an analytical tool that focuses on
ensuring security for the individual, not the state."[15]
UNDP also acknowledges on its Web site that it is the largest
recipient agency of funds from the U.N. Trust Fund for Human
Security (UNTFHS):

Between
1999 and June 2005, UNDP received approximately $55 million for 28
projects which consisted of 36% of the overall allocation of
UNTFHS….

UNTFHS
has been enabling UNDP to conceptualize and operationalize the
notion of Human Security initially suggested in the Human
Development Report 1994. UNDP's operation and partnership building
with the people-centred approaches and principles is considered as
an integral part of Sustainable Human
Development.…

UNTFHS
has strengthened UNDP's coordination and partnerships with other UN
agencies, and civil society and other partners, which promotes
effective use of UN and international aid resources.[16]

In a May
2006 report, UNDP analyzed its vari­ous National Human
Development Reports and "the notion of human security as a useful
tool of analysis, explanation and policy generation." It
rec­ommended using human security as an "opera­tional
approach to people-centred security that is able to identify
priorities and produce important conclusions for national and
international policy."[17]

The U.N.
Environmental Program (UNEP) refers to UNDP's work in explaining
its own human security agenda:

In 1994,
the UN Human Development Re­port introduced the concept of
human se­curity, predicating it on the dual notion of, on the
one hand, safety from chronic threats of hunger, disease and
repression and, on the other hand, protection from sudden and
hurtful disruptions in daily life. Environmental insecurity became
short­hand for the dimension of human insecu­rity induced
by the combined effects of natural disasters and mismanaged
environ­mental endowment.[18]

The
Nation-State Buy-In.Regrettably,
many U.N. member states have also adopted the human secu­rity
mindset and are incorporating its language and goals into their
foreign policy.[19]

Japan.Japan was
the initial contributor to the U.N. Human Security Trust Fund and
has stated:

[T]he
concept of "human security"…means in addition to providing
national protection, focusing on each and every person,
eliminat­ing threats to people through cooperation by various
countries, international organiza­tions, nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) and civil society, and striving to strengthen
the capacity of people and society so as to enable people to lead
self-sufficient lives.[20]

European
Union (EU)."A Human
Security Doctrine for Europe: The Barcelona Report of the Study
Group on Europe's Security Capabilities" explains the breadth of
the EU's human security agenda in this way:

Human
security means individual freedom from basic insecurities.
Genocide, wide-spread or systematic torture, inhuman and degrading
treatment, disappearances, slavery, and crimes against humanity and
grave viola­tions of the laws of war as defined in the
Stat­ute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) are forms of
intolerable insecurity that breach human security. Massive
violations of the right to food, health and housing may also be
considered in this category, although their legal status is less
elevated. A human security approach for the European Union means
that it should contribute to the protection of every individual
human being and not only on the defence of the Union's borders, as
was the security approach of nation-states.[21]

Canada,
Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.The
governments of Canada, Nor­way, Sweden, Switzerland, and the
U.K. fund a Web site, "The Human Security Gateway," that describes
itself as a "rapidly expanding searchable online database of human
security-related resources including reports, journal articles,
news items and fact sheets. It is designed to make human
security-related research more accessible to the policy and
research communities, the media, edu­cators and the interested
public."[22]

Human
Security vs. National Security.The Human
Security Gateway Web site succinctly explains the challenge that
the human security agenda poses to the principle of national
security:

Human
security focuses on the protection of individuals, rather than
defending the physi­cal and political integrity of states from
exter­nal military threats-the traditional goal of national
security. Ideally, national security and human security should be
mutually rein­forcing, but in the last 100 years far more
people have died as a direct or indirect con­sequence of the
actions of their own govern­ments or rebel forces in civil wars
than have been killed by invading foreign armies. Acting in the
name of national security, governments can pose profound threats to
human security.[23]

Although
it is perhaps understandable that some might wish to update
conceptions of national secu­rity to reflect the realities of a
21st century world, the notion that human security should supplant
national security and the preservation of freedom as the
fundamental responsibilities of the state is wrongheaded. During
the Cold War, national secu­rity was considered largely within
the context of a bipolar world in which the United States and the
Soviet Union, and their spheres of influence, squared off against
each other ideologically, diplo­matically, economically,
politically, and militarily. National security was often measured
in terms of nuclear warheads, weapons platforms, military
divisions, and defense spending.

The
dissolution of the Soviet Union changed the dynamics. States now
understand and view secu­rity not solely in terms of military
threats and terri­torial invasions, but also in terms of
terrorism and weapons of mass destruction; economic dangers (e.g.,
cyber attacks); and global environmental threats (e.g., avian flu).
The term "national secu­rity" has come under scrutiny because
of the grow­ing number of threats that are transnational.[24]
The Bush Administration has encouraged a robust dia­logue on
how states can best address these threats through cooperative
actions to ensure their security in a globalized world.

Discarding
the principle of national security is not the answer. Neither is
creating a binding interna­tional agreement on human security.
Yet from the ini­tial report of the Commission on Human
Security in 2000[25]
to the latest draft documents from UNESCO conferences in the
developing world and the May 2006 UNDP Human Security Framework
report, promoters of human security have set in motion a multi-year
plan that may well culminate in a declara­tion or universal
convention on human security.[26]

The
process is quite similar to the six-year process at UNESCO that in
2005 culminated in a binding Convention on Cultural Diversity.
Despite intense efforts to make that convention acceptable, the
United States could not sign it because of its core protectionist
policies.[27]
The first successful use of this new deliberative U.N. process is
described on Wikipedia as the NGO effort to push govern­ments
to adopt a convention banning anti-personnel land mines:

Arms
control is also an important priority for Human Security advocates,
closely linking with the Freedom from Fear agenda. An oft-claimed
example of this is the Ottawa Con­vention banning
anti-personnel landmines. The Convention has been described as an
illustration of how human security can work in the real world, as a
coalition of like-minded powers, along with civil society worked
together to eliminate anti-personnel land mines. The process
leading up to the formation of the Convention was quite a departure
from that of traditional security instruments with massive
involvement from non-government groups and civil society-it could
almost be seen as NGO's bringing governments to the negotiating
table.[28]

David
Davenport indicates in an extensive piece on this "new diplomacy,"
as he calls the Ottawa Process, that NGOs have learned from these
successes how to exert enormous pressure on governments to achieve
binding international conventions to improve human security.
Following success in Ottawa, the process proved successful in Rome
in creating an International Criminal Court. Says
Davenport:

NGOS and
like-minded states continue to meet to discuss what additional
projects they might tackle together. One need only listen to their
rhetoric, and that of the U.N. leader­ship, to speculate about
what other projects might be on the new diplomacy horizon. In a
larger sense, their agenda is no less than set­ting the global
agenda and, as U.N. docu­ments describe it, constructing a "new
global architecture for the twenty-first century." The report of
the Commission on Global Gover­nance, with its lovely title
("Our Global Vil­lage") and anti-American tone, speaks of
organizing life on the planet not by balancing the power among
nations, but by constrain­ing the states themselves. This is
the agenda of the new diplomacy.[29]

In
essence, these efforts to achieve binding docu­ments are aimed
at recasting the traditional meaning of human rights and
development as national secu­rity challenges that are better
addressed by "people-centric" rather than state-based activities.
Getting multilateral organizations to use individuals, instead of
states, as the reference points for evaluating secu­rity policy
is extremely problematic because it dif­fuses accountability
and fiduciary responsibility.

The
United States government, which prioritizes national security and
homeland security, has wisely not yet tried to formulate a specific
human security policy, but that does not mean the mindset is not
already being advocated. Indeed, Members of Con­gress such as
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA)[30]
and scholars such as Professor Slaughter[31]
have adopted the language of human security and have published
pieces on how to deal with the myriad issues that it
subsumes.

For
example, Professor Slaughter, in the intro­duction to a 2004
Trilateral Commission report, explains that theory about the
legitimate use of force is undergoing transformation. She believes
the basic tension is now "state security vs. human security" or how
to:

integrate
traditional understandings of state security-whereby the principal
threat to a state's survival was posed by another state and the
security of a state was largely synon­ymous with the security
of its people-with an appreciation of the magnitude and
im­portance of what Kazuo Ogura [the Japan Foundation] calls
"global security issues"- terrorism, environmental degradation,
inter­national crime, infectious diseases and ref­ugees?
These issues cross borders with disdain for the divisions of
national and in­ternational authority.[32]

This
misunderstanding of the nature of security poses significant
threats to the international order because it undermines the
primacy of nation-state relations and sovereignty. Providing for
the secu­rity and public safety of citizens is a principal
attribute of national sovereignty. Indeed, nation-states that are
democracies are best prepared to fill this role because their
leaders are held account­able by the governed. As the U.N.'s
problems in responding to crises around the world show, the
nation-state, not any international organization, is the best
guarantor of individual freedoms for the 21st century. Shifting the
focus of security policy from the collective will of free people to
provide for their common defense to one of protecting a range of
individual and collective political, eco­nomic, and cultural
"rights" as defined by interna­tional bodies or non-state
actors like NGOs confuses the nature of the modern state's roles
and responsibilities.

Regrettably,
the United States is unintentionally helping to promote this
misunderstanding of secu­rity by funding the U.N. organizations
that are engaged in promoting human security activities.

Neoliberalism
also takes a structuralist approach to international relations,
believing that power is exercised and distributed through formal
organiza­tions and institutions, but that its theoretical
framework includes domestic players (e.g., legisla­tures,
unions, and corporations) and non-state actors (e.g., NGOs and
international organiza­tions). In the neoliberal paradigm,
conflict and competition are not inevitable. Institutions can act
to ameliorate international conflict and promote cooperation,
trust, and joint action.[33]
President Woodrow Wilson's foreign policies and his effort to
create a governing international security institu­tion through
the League of Nations are often cited as the foundation of
neoliberal thinking in the United States.[34]

Four
Freedoms.A
dialogue on using the collec­tive power of states to protect
the rights of individuals emerged as part of the debate over the
post-World War II order. The challenge was to prevent the
reemergence of fascist ideologies, which became state policies
during the Nazi era, without interfering in the legitimate
sovereignty of individual states.

President
Franklin Roosevelt attempted to pro­vide an answer in his Four
Freedoms speech on January 6, 1941, to the 77th Congress. Roosevelt
outlined the world he would like to see in the future-one that the
United States would be help­ing to make secure. This world
would be founded on four freedoms:

"Freedom
of speech and expression everywhere in the world."

"Freedom
for everyone to worship God in his or her way throughout the
world."

"Freedom
from want," which Roosevelt trans­lated as grounded in economic
relationships. He envisioned a world order in which all
peo­ples would have a secure, peacetime life.

"Freedom
from fear," which he interpreted as meaning "a world-wide reduction
of arma­ments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion
that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical
aggression against any neighbor-anywhere in the world."[35]

In July
1941, Roosevelt and Winston Churchill relied on this world view to
draft the Atlantic Charter, but reportedly, not even its signers
were satisfied with that document. In fact, Roosevelt, a former
member of the Wilson Administration, left an ambivalent record of
what he believed the char­ter meant.[36]
Josef Stalin declined even to sign it.

Many U.S.
postwar initiatives encouraged inter­national governance by
democratic processes, with international organizations serving as
arbiters of disputes and protectors of the peace. The years after
World War II saw the establishment of mech­anisms that
stabilized the international economy and further promoted a vision
of collective security. The Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944
established rules, institutions, and procedures to regulate the
international monetary system. It required each country to adopt a
monetary policy that fixed its currency exchange rate at a certain
value of gold, plus or minus 1 percent, and established the
Inter­national Monetary Fund as a way to bridge tempo­rary
payment imbalances.

The
signing of the U.N. Charter on June 26, 1945, provided another push
toward a new princi­ple of collective security. It established
the follow­ing stated goals:

"to
practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as
good neighbours, and

"to unite
our strength to maintain international peace and security,
and

"to
ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of
methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common
interest, and

"to
employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic
and social advance­ment of all peoples."[37]

Over the
course of decades, the U.N. bureau­cracy has come to see its
role as facilitating not only peace and security, but also human
rights, develop­ment, and social equity.

Human
Rights and Human Security.Much of
the U.N. agenda involves the protection of human rights. Although
use of the term "human rights" preceded 1945, its meaning was
largely recast in the postwar years. In Western thought during the
18th century, human rights were associated with concepts of natural
law, often interchanged with the term "rights of man." Human rights
also served as a synonym for "civil rights," a narrow set of
indi­vidual legal entitlements.[38]
After World War II, the term "human rights" was used to delineate
the difference between democratic and authoritarian societies.
Democratic societies recognized that indi­viduals were entitled
to certain rights merely by being human. In 1948, the U.N.
published a Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 300
languages.[39]

The
outbreak of the Cold War, however, did much to dampen the drive
toward international governance. While there was much discussion of
the role of human rights in foreign affairs, their pro­tection
was considered a matter of national policy. Charges of human rights
abuses were endemic dur­ing the Cold War. Some were valid
complaints. Others were made for propaganda value or as part of
psychological warfare campaigns. In part because of the Cold War
standoff between the nuclear superpowers, the international
community found it difficult to interfere in the internal
gover­nance of other countries, even in the face of human
rights abuses and genocide.

After the
Cold War, the term "human security" came into vogue, signaling a
movement away from a focus on national security and states as
actors.[40]
The concept was meant to define security within a broad global
framework as "political, strategic, economic, social, or ecological
[in] nature."[41]
Arguments were made that security represented more than physical
security and the right of com­mon defense and that the
international community had rights and responsibilities that
superseded those of individual states.

Globalization
and the increasing interconnected­ness of societies around the
world added impetus to the human security movement. The growth of
international, multinational, transnational, non­governmental,
and non-state actors challenged aca­demics and practitioners of
security studies to think more broadly and to reconsider the world
construct and the role of traditional state actors.

Current
Challenges

In the
early 1990s, UNDP published a series of annual reports that cast
its work in the new para­digm of human security: "Now that the
cold war is over, the challenge is to rebuild societies around
people's needs," argued UNDP. "Security should be reinterpreted as
security for people, not security for land."[42]
The emphasis was clear: In the post-Cold War world, individuals-not
the collective com­munity or the state-mattered
most.

Secretary-General
Annan recalled Roosevelt's Four Freedoms at the U.N. Millennium
Summit in 2005, when he called upon nations to advance the goals of
"freedom from want" and "freedom from fear." He relied on this
theme in his "In Larger Freedom" report of 2005,[43]
to which he added "freedom to live in dignity." As he described it
in Foreign Affairs, "the states of the world must create a
collective security system" that promotes freedom from want and
free­dom from fear.[44]
Rhetorically, these terms-like human security-sound laudable, but
they dissem­ble rather than clarify how states and non-state
actors should think about national security and on what state
activities international organizations should focus. While
non-state actors may voluntar­ily monitor, assist, and
facilitate states in fulfilling their responsibilities, the state
is ultimately responsi­ble and accountable for the population
in its charge.

The human
security movement has made signif­icant progress in promoting a
redistributionist regime as a reasonable approach to providing
national security. A good example of this is pro­vided by the
conclusions of a March 2005 Interna­tional Conference on Human
Security in the Arab Region organized by UNESCO and the Regional
Human Security Center at the Jordan Institute of Diplomacy. In
attendance were officials from U.N. agencies and programs,
ministers from Jordan, government officials from the Middle East
and North Africa region, local and international civil society
groups and nongovernmental organiza­tions, and academics. They
concluded with these specific points:

(1) At a
minimum, every citizen should enjoy access to education, health
services and income-generating activities. Citizens who are unable
to meet their basic needs through their own efforts should have
public support. In particular, particular attention should be given
to vulnerable groups, such as children, the elderly, the
handicapped, the chronically ill and people in isolated or remote
areas. If States are unable to provide assistance, such
assistance should be provided by the international
community.

(2) The
concept of human security and its underlying values of solidarity,
tolerance, openness, dialogue, transparency, accountability,
justice and equity should be widely disseminated in societies. To
that effect, human security should be incorporated at all levels of
education. The media, particularly radio and television, should be
mobilized to organize awareness-raising campaigns. It should also
encourage people to explore ways to enhance their own security and
that of members of their communities.

(3) Civil
society should be mobilized to participate in the promotion of
human security. Special efforts should be made to mobilize women's
associations, academics, professional organizations and the private
sector. This is to benefit from their resources, skills and
proximity to ensure ownership of the concept of human security by
local stakeholders and a wide dissemination of the culture of human
security.[45]

Human
Security as Welfare Entitlements.UNESCO
officials appear to have determined that the human security agenda
can best be advanced through changes in domestic policies based on
social science data, independent from the difficult traditional
member-state negotiations process. Through UNESCO's Management of
Social Trans­formations (MOST) Program, they are encouraging
the formation of regional research and policy think tanks comprised
primarily of university social sci­ence researchers and
representatives of NGOs sym­pathetic to the human security
agenda. At the prompting of UNESCO, these regional bodies are
producing social science research and policies for a UNESCO
database-a database that, significantly, makes no provision for
countervailing research. Advocates are encouraged to rely on this
database and research to lobby states to make changes in domestic
laws.

The
foundational and motivating sentiments of the MOST Program can be
found in the Buenos Aires Declaration adopted in February 2006 at
the International Forum on the Social Science-Policy Nexus, which
mirrors much of the established language of human security in other
documents:

Taking
into accountseveral
United Nations reports highlighting the sharp increase in
in­equalities between and within countries, and greatly
concerned that the universal thrust of human rights, human
dignity and justice is in many instances being eroded under
contem­porary social and economic pressure.

Assumingthat the
Millennium Development Goals and other internationally agreed
devel­opment goals are not only the statement of new moral
purpose but also the minimum threshold compatible with the
proclaimed values of the international community, and
affirming that failure to make serious progress toward
achieving them would entail tremen­dous cost in terms of human
lives, quality of life and social development.

Convincedthat
without moral vision and po­litical will, the challenges of the
Millennium Development Goals cannot be met, that meeting these
goals requires new knowledge used in innovative ways and better use
of ex­isting knowledge, and that, in this regard, the social
sciences have a crucial contribution to make in formulating
development policy.[46]

The human
security agenda has progressed quite rapidly since 2001, when the
U.N. first tasked the Commission on Human Security with developing
the concept as an operational tool for policy formu­lation and
implementation and proposing a con­crete program of action to
address critical and pervasive threats to human security.[47]
The com­mission's 2003 report called specifically for linking
human security initiatives and the establishment of joint public,
private, and civil society activities. It made no effort to
disguise its philosophy that nation-states are incapable of
providing security:

It is no
longer viable for any state to assert unrestricted national
sovereignty while act­ing in its own interests, especially
where oth­ers are affected by its actions. There has to be an
institutional system of external oversight and decision-making that
states voluntarily subscribe to.[48]

The
commission also recommended the creation of the U.N. Trust Fund for
Human Security with an advisory board of a group of nations
committed to spreading the human security agenda. The fund is
supposed to be used to address threats to "human lives, livelihoods
and dignity currently facing the international community." Any U.N.
agency can apply for funding to address issues like poverty,
ref­ugees, medical and health care, drug control, and
transnational crime. For example, the World Health Organization
uses its funding to provide emergency reproductive health services
to dis­placed populations in the Solomon Islands. UNDP uses its
funding to establish support groups for those with HIV/AIDS in
Trinidad and Tobago.[49]

The
problem here is not that the U.N. is trying to help people in need,
but that it uses the Human Security Trust Fund to advance an agenda
for secu­rity that bears no resemblance to established
secu­rity paradigms.

UNESCO is
intensifying its human security activities. It has an on-line forum
where anyone in the world can post opinions on human security.[50]
It is holding a series of regional conferences in 2006-2007 in
Africa, the Arab states, and South­east Asia to consider
priorities. The outcome will likely mirror recommendations that
came out of the March 2005 International Conference on Human
Security meeting in the Arab region. As noted above, those
recommendations treat issues such as education, health, and
welfare-issues already addressed by other U.N. programs-as rights
that require the international redistribution of wealth and a
greater reliance on supranational organiza­tions if states are
not meeting their standards.

It is no
wonder that human security appears to be more like an elaborate
international welfare scheme than an endeavor to protect against
real security threats. Proponents treat human security as a grand
and noble cause and a responsibility of the human community as a
whole. Their use of the term suggests broad international consensus
over which political, economic, cultural, legal, and phys­ical
rights constitute human rights. However, nei­ther of these
presumptions is factually true.

Arguably,
no state can meet all of the security needs of its people as
described by the U.N.'s defini­tion of human security. The
United Nations bureau­cracy frequently issues reports that
criticize states for failing to do so, and the United States
receives its share of criticism. For example, the July 28, 2006,
report of the U.N. Human Rights Committee expresses concern that
the United States "has not succeeded in eliminating racial
discrimination such as regarding the wide disparities in the
quality of education across school districts in metropolitan areas,
to the detriment of minority students." It con­cludes that the
United States should take "remedial steps."[51]
The report fails to mention the federalism principle of U.S.
government, which gives states the primary responsibility for
education. Nor does it point out that the school districts in many
major U.S. cities, where those disparities are greatest, already
spend tens of thousands of dollars per student.

In
reality, no state will ever be able to meet even a majority of the
needs proponents now associate with human security for every
individual within its borders. Without careful prioritization, a
state seeking to meet the demands of human security could well
disburse its resources inefficiently on peripheral but politically
sensitive priorities.

Not only
could this focus on human security undermine a state's authority
and sovereignty, but its broad scope could also be exploited by
authori­tarian states as an excuse for unwarranted internal
oppression. Given that "community security" is considered essential
to human security, a state could argue that it can justifiably
suppress any form of free expression that it believes jeopardizes a
community's traditions and values.

Given all
of these concerns, the notion that human security should become an
integral part of the U.S. lexicon of international relations is
troubling.

Conclusion

Human
security, as conservatives understand it, is really all about
protecting ourselves from national security threats and securing
fundamental freedoms and human rights while providing opportunities
to improve one's own standard of liv­ing. They see
globalization and competition in a free-market economy as enablers
of the opportuni­ties that lead to prosperity and the
achievement of human dignity, not as threats to human
security.

In
international agreements, the term "human security" should be used
only as a description of a desirable human condition, not as an
alternative to national security or an entitlements issue. Careful
attention to its use is critical to counter the notion that
international organizations have more moral right to protect people
than the state has. Moreover, careful attention to its use should
preserve, not con­fuse, the historical understanding of human
rights.

The goal
of international deliberations should be to strengthen democratic
states as the best guaran­tors of security and liberty. In no
case should some­thing as broadly defined as human security be
considered appropriate for international declara­tions and
conventions. To that end, the Administra­tion and Congress
should:

Protectthe
use of "national security" and "national sovereignty" in
international state­ments, documents, and treaties;

Discourageuse
of the term "human security" in international deliberations unless
it is defined within the boundaries of nation-states and
sov­ereignty;

Retainthe
term "human rights" as the interna­tional standard for moral
behavior by the state toward its citizens, and

Rely, in
legislative enactments, agency regula­tions, and case
decisions, exclusively on human rights instruments that have been
officially adopted and ratified by the United States.

In May
2006, the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO provided U.S.
negotiators with welcome guidance in this respect in its statement
regard­ing UNESCO's "Draft Medium Term Strategy for 2008-2013
and Draft Program and Budget for 2008-2009":

Any human
security agenda or program de­veloped, facilitated, or promoted
by UNESCO should be defined, designed, and pursued only with the
meaningful participation and approval of all Member States and
should not involve the pursuit and adoption of any human security
standards or normative instruments.[52]

War,
aggression, violence, and all the other negative aspects of living
in today's world will con­tinue to endanger the lives of
individuals, states, and regions of the world. As long as this is
true, security-which provides the environment in which all other
liberties and opportunities are pos­sible-will remain a
function and responsibility of the sovereign state.

James
Jay Carafano, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow for
National Security and Homeland Security, and Janice A. Smith is
Special Assistant to the Vice President of Foreign and Defense
Policy, in the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for
International Studies at The Heritage Foundation. David Gentilli,
Research Assistant for Homeland Security at The Her­itage
Foundation, and Todd Schmidt, graduate student at Georgetown Public
Policy Institute, also contributed to this report.This paper is one
of a series prepared as part of the Freedom Project of the Margaret
Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage
Foundation.

[5]For more
on the issue of international law, see Lee A. Casey and David B.
Rivkin, Jr., "International Law and the Nation-
State at the U.N.: A Guide for U.S. Policymakers," Heritage
Foundation Backgrounder No. 1961, August 18, 2006, at www.heritage.org/Research/WorldwideFreedom/bg_1961.pdf.

[12] For
a more detailed discussion of the issue of rights versus
entitlements, see Helle C. Dale, "Economic and Political Rights at
the U.N.: A Guide for U.S. Policymakers," Heritage Foundation
Backgrounder No. 1964, August 30, 2006.

[30] Barbara
Boxer, "Providing Basic Human Security," The Washington
Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Spring 2003), pp. 199-207, at www.twq.com/03spring/docs/13-boxer-noc.pdf
(August 23, 2006). She quotes Peter Piot, executive director
of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS): "There is
a world of difference between the root causes of terrorism and the
impact of AIDS on security. But at some deep level, we should be
reminded that, in many parts of the world, AIDS has caused a normal
way of life to be called into question. As a global issue,
therefore, we must pay attention to AIDS as a threat to human
security and redouble our efforts against the epidemic and its
impact." Ibid., p. 203.

[38]Paul
Gordon Lauren, The Evolution of International Human Rights:
Visions Seen (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1998), p. 21.

[39] For
a more detailed discussion of this issue, see Jennifer A. Marshall
and Grace V. Smith, "Human Rights and Social Issues at the U.N.: A
Guide for U.S. Policymakers," Heritage Foundation
Backgrounder No. 1965, August 31, 2006.

[40] Independent
Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues, Common Security:
A Blueprint for Survival (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1982).

[50] "This
Forum should become a meeting place to exchange ideas and debate
about topical issues which we shall present to you in an
interactive manner." U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization, "Human Security."